


IntimiDATE You

by UnderTheFridge



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, And everyone else - Freeform, Because the world needs more cute HH being assholes to each other, Gen, HYDRA Husbands, M/M, Marriage, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Unapologetic fluff (with guns), Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9381203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderTheFridge/pseuds/UnderTheFridge
Summary: (Or, 5 times Agent Rumlow and Agent Rollins were a threatening presence, and 1 time they weren't.)





	1. Chapter 1

They call it ‘Back To Basic’, in a derisive way, but it bonds new SHIELD agents like nothing else - whatever their skills, it puts them on the same page. It’s a shared experience.

It also makes it very easy for HYDRA to train up operatives in bunches, so there’s that.

This group are all on the dark side, as are the instructors. It’s been fun. Brock has enjoyed it thoroughly, with only one thorn in his side (and isn’t that just the most annoying thing).

The guy is about his age, maybe a year or two younger. Small-town Southern. Hired gun with a murky past (like most of them). Tall. Scarred. And completely quiet, to the point where they wonder if he can even speak. He can, of course, but ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ is about the extent of it. He’ll answer if directly addressed, in a soft-edged voice. That’s it. He’s stoic, silent and assured.

Brock picks on him relentlessly. Every exercise, every briefing, every midnight hazing. Bringing him into everything, selecting him for everything. Just see what it’ll take to get a rise out of him.

It takes more than that, apparently. The bastard just won’t give in. It’s funny for the rest of them, but it drives him up the wall. Not that he lets on. He won’t let them know that it gets to him, just like he won’t let them know that he thinks the guy is hot as hell.

So he gets personal.

“Wouldya look at that?” He presses his thumb deliberately, insultingly, on the scar down the side of the bastard’s chin (and tries not to think about being so close to his lips). “What happened, you wrestle a bear or somethin’?”

Everyone laughs, because they know what’s good for them - and they do find it amusing, because they’re that kind of people.

“Yep.” Obviously not true. His eyes never flicker.

“Really did a number on ya, huh?”

A pause. “You should see the bear.”

And that makes them howl, and Brock turns away so the bastard - Agent Rollins - can’t see him smile. Calls him a smartass fuck, so he doesn’t have to think about looking into those eyes, which were telling him something he didn’t want to know.

It wasn’t too much later that he realised that in his quest to make a bitch - and not caring if he made an enemy - he’d made himself a lieutenant.

It’s the most brilliant and the most stupid thing he’s ever done.


	2. Chapter 2

“Oop,” Dan says. “Gotta go.” He looks at his watch, as if to confirm it. “See you around.”

“See you,” Sonya replies brightly, still pedalling away. “I’ll be a couple minutes.”

When he moves, she can see past where he was standing - and suddenly realises why he left.

She’d said a couple of minutes, but rounding out the hour won’t hurt. It’s good for her, anyway. She needs to exercise more. She took the lift to the 20th floor this morning. And she went out for lunch with Zainab yesterday, and that cheese and tomato panini was perfect - but gotta burn it off, right? The showers will probably be busy right now. And she hasn’t reached the end of her playlist yet. There’s no point leaving until she’s had at least once chance to pretend to be Ariana Grande.

She slows down, almost willing to admit that none of those are the real reason she’s staying put. She doesn’t feel much like that Ariana impression right now.

It’s best to keep your head down, although she can’t help but look. Apparently there are about ten of them in total, and eight are here. Two of them look like they’re actually trying to kill each other on the mats. They have nothing against Sonya - probably haven’t noticed her, probably don’t care - but all the same, it’s hard to shake off the feeling of being watched. She’d have to walk right past them to get to the exit.

After a record hour and a half of calorie combustion, she makes a break for it. The pack of predators doesn’t break up and chase her - not that they would. But it’s best that they don’t see her there. The rest of the gym is empty for a reason. Being in their orbit seems dangerous.

Her legs wobble as she gets back to her desk, but surely that’s just from the exercise.


	3. Chapter 3

If he was being followed, he wouldn’t do this. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t do this either. He doesn’t want to go back to the Triskelion, though. Because they’ll be Concerned, and if there’s one thing that pisses him off, it’s people being Concerned at him - not  _ about _ him,  _ at _ him. Rogers does it particularly well/badly.

It’s the witching hour, 3am. He pauses in the stairwell, weapon in hand (although his grandmama would probably be quicker on the draw than him at this point, and she’s been dead for ten years). Behind a locked apartment door, sounds emerge.

Someone is watching Dora The Explorer - loudly - at 3am, and he just stands and listens.  _ ¡Hola! _ The world rolls across the edge of insanity.

He snaps back to his senses and the stairwell is cold and bare, and he  _ needs _ what he needed already, but stronger. He climbs the stairs two at a time, leaving behind the laughter of children.

There’s no answer when he knocks on the door the first time, so he does it again. And then again. He may have even cursed at it for good measure, pushed his head against the immobile wood and demanded that this fucking door be opened right fucking now or so help him god he’ll break it down -.

The door is opened - just a crack, but it’s open - and his head is suddenly resting on the business end of a silencer. He grins and drops his own weapon to the carpet.

“Hey, ah, this is gonna sound weird….”

“ID.”

“C’mon, you really think….”

“ID, dumbass.”

“C’mon, Jack….”

There’s an ominous click. Of course, Jack isn’t stupid enough to risk shooting him right in the hallway. Of course, the noise was made by something else. But there’s logic, and there’s standing out here wondering whether the decor might actually be improved by the contents of his head.

He could fish out his SHIELD badge with the fancy holographic logo and the biometric thingies that serves as a free pass to a hundred embassies (and quite a few nightclubs), but instead he reaches for the collar of his vest and pulls the dog tags free. A hand comes out to caress them.

“So, d’you believe m-.”

The hand on the chain yanks him through the door. He leans - is pushed - against the nearest wall and takes the opportunity to tuck his tags (plus the gunmetal-coloured ring) back into his shirt.

“The fuck were you thinking?”

“I’m not hurt, no. Thanks for asking. Went well. Bad guys probably think I’m dead, all good.”

Jack just stares at him, expression unreadable in the low light. If he had to guess, probably somewhere between ‘unimpressed’ and ‘really fucking unimpressed’.

“You stink. Take a fuckin’ shower.”

He does, and it feels like the first sphere of heaven. Collapsing on the couch is the second. Being dragged off the couch is a low point, but by then it’s somehow morning and light and he ends up in a mass of warm duvet (he’s been kicked  _ out _ of beds plenty in the past; only with Jack has he ever been kicked  _ into _ bed).

He passes out for another few hours, and thus manages to get all the way to lunch before having to explain what the fuck is going on.


	4. Chapter 4

Presentations either make you feel like the world’s greatest speaker, or they make you feel like shit. For Andrew, the latter is currently true. He leans on a featureless grey wall near a featureless grey door and pretends the apple-scented vapour around his face is harsh, acerbic smoke. It doesn’t work. He’s been so proud of stamping down on his cravings, but they’ve all come back at once, as if to remind him that he’s only a man, after all. He doesn’t need the reminder. He already knows this.

His boss called him ‘A-man’ like she sometimes does, as he left the office yesterday, and it made him smile. He’d winked at her. He had Motivation, and he was about to go out there and teach Motivation to the masses, like a kind of corporate Jesus.

(Bear in mind, he doesn’t _actually_ think he’s like Jesus - that’s an Over-Stretch, and the Truth Elastic would ping him back before too long. But sometimes he thinks it might be how a prophet feels.)

He’d seen enough tooled-up guards on the way through the building to be able to control his reaction by the time he got to the seminar room. He was used to a couple of guys in uniform at the front desk, maybe with a taser between them. The SHIELD place was swarming, and they were all properly armed. With proper weapons. National security was the business here, and it seemed like national security required ladies and gentlemen in full military gear prowling around the offices as if they owned the place.

Four of them walked into his session, and he didn’t feel any safer for having them there. He projected confidence and assurance and looked them over like any other participants. A couple of the rest were uniformed in grey or blue - the majority business-dressed - but these guys were all in black. The one who entered first also took his seat first: directly in the middle, with the others ranged behind him. Andrew assigned leadership characteristics to him. He had a narrow, tanned face, and it was a mistake to look directly into his eyes. He held Andrew’s gaze for a second, before deliberately turning away and saying something to one of the ones in the back row. Whatever it was made them laugh.

Andrew didn’t mention it, because it wouldn’t promote a productive discussion, and they weren’t there to examine the ways in which certain characteristics led to different perceptions of the same personal whole (that was a whole other course, with a couple of Employee and Employer Relations prerequisites).

The guy was a dick, though.

That became obvious within five minutes, and Andrew started to wonder why he was in the session at all, before remembering that it was mandatory for most levels of SHIELD personnel. Clearly, though, this guy didn’t need an interactive day workshop on Motivation, Goal Setting and Goal Communication. He already had plenty of Motivation - being an asshole. He already had Short-term and Long-term Career Goals - being an asshole to as many people as possible. And he was communicating those goals impressively well.

The thing to do with troublemakers (Andrew’s boss ran the talks on that, and they’d all been through it) was to remain polite and professional, and maybe try to draw them out a little. Laugh at their jokes, let them feel like they could contribute - or at least become Passengers on the bus, instead of Prisoners *. Often the smartass, properly engaged, could actually be good for the group dynamic.

Andrew wanted to punch the guy in the face. That was his Caveman Brain talking, and he knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. Plus, the guy had a gun. Plus, even if he hadn’t, his tight black shirt showed off arms you could hang a tyre swing from. Third plus, even if Andrew suddenly pulled out some kung fu mastery, there was backup - one woman and two other men, the nearest of whom was a brick house with a scarred face and a steady, unsettling gaze.

They shouldn’t have got to him but they did, they really did.

And he has to go back in there for the afternoon session.

 -

“Don’t let them get to you.”

The woman has appeared next to him. She’s tall, with dark hair pulled back in a bun and cheekbones he would stare at all day if he was able. She’s in a blouse and uniform trousers and he wants her to airlift him from a sinking ship and then kiss him on a rope dangling from a helicopter.

He doesn’t tell her any of this, because that’s also his Caveman Brain talking. He makes a defeated sound from behind his cloud.

“They’re just messing with you,” she says, factually but not unkindly. “You’ve done well so far. They’re just assholes.”

“Thank you,” he says, not sure what he’s thanking her for. “It’s that one - that one guy….”

“Don’t worry about him. He has to have the upper hand all the time - or he thinks he does.  The rest of us are listening to you, not him.”

“Bark’s worse than his bite?”

“Oh, he has a really nasty bite. But you won’t see him use it. For now, yeah - he’s just barking.”

He tells her that’s helpful and she leaves. It’s only after he gets back inside and the door crashes behind him that he realises she wasn’t smoking.

-

The afternoon is slightly less terrible than the morning, if only because everyone is quieter and full of lunch. He even manages a few smart responses to the barking. When the group in black leave, they practically charge out before the rest.

At least, he thought they all left.

As he gathers his things - not many, because a modern presenter should be agile and proactive, rather than relying on notes or props - a soft and deliberate sound alerts him. He turns around, and it’s the guy with the scar. Who looks even bigger and even scarier up close. Andrew immediately wants to put some distance - preferably a small country - between them.

“That was good,” the guy says, and those weren’t the words that Andrew expected. “I don’t know how useful it was to me, personally - but you’re a good presenter. Maybe slow down a little in your summing-up, but that’s it. I’m sure they’ll have you recommended, get you back in one day.”

“Thanks,” Andrew squeaks, uncurling his hand from its death grip on the laser pointer. His lungs decide that breathing is now an option. “Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.” He manages a smile and hopes it looks like professionalism and not terror.

The guy smiles back, although it’s barely there, and goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * All the other corporate jargon here is made up. This, I promise, is not.


	5. Chapter 5

“You know why you’re here.”

“Yes sir.”

There’s no point in him denying it, so he doesn’t. Brock respects that.

“Sean Rose is your cousin. You didn’t tell us that. He  _ recognised _ you.” He lets that sink in for a long moment - with anyone else, it would be possible to see them start to squirm. Jack doesn’t give him that satisfaction, and in truth he doesn’t expect it. “Do you think it could have jeopardised the mission?”

“No sir.” That’s not unexpected, either.

“Well, you - you’re right… but c’mon, Jack. You gotta disclose that shit. You knew Rose was gonna be there. What if we’d had to take him out, huh? Would you do it?”

“Yes sir.”

Brock sighs, to cover his unease. The guy would shoot his own cousin rather than fluff a mission objective. He knows this about Jack, truly, but it gets him every time. A stirring of fear in his chest and a stirring of something else entirely in his pants.

“We haven’t spoken in a long time,” Jack adds, as if that helps.

“Uh-huh. You gonna send him a Christmas card this year? Address it to interrogation room two, SHIELD basement?” No reply, and he doesn’t need one. “Before you do that - something else first.”

He takes a coin from his pocket and holds it up.

“You know the deal. Heads you lose, tails you win.”

That’s as much as he can say here, under watchful eyes. But suffice to know that HYDRA wanted Rose as much as SHIELD - and HYDRA punish disobedience, as well. It’s 50/50 which side will give the penalty.

He flips the coin, and catches it neatly on the back of his hand. Takes a covert look. Grins at his second, giving away nothing.

“Well, would you look at that.” He holds his hands together and waits, and waits.

There’s the twitch.

It takes a lot to make it happen, but it happens. Eventually Jack will run out of patience, and Brock is an expert at making it so.

“I don’t have all day,” Jack says, and the tightness in his face makes what would otherwise be a smartass remark into a kind of plea. Brock loves it.

“Hah. Tails, you big lump.” There is no sigh of relief, although it’s a near thing (Jack seems almost impervious to pain, he’ll take any punishment without complaint, but he  _ hates  _ being naked in front of the team). “I know, I know. But hey, I can watch you do paperwork for a while. That’ll be fun, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you recognised the name - yes, Sean Rose from the 2016 Hitman game (Colorado mission). I'm convinced he could be Jack's Australian cousin. Fight me.
> 
> (don't fight me)


	6. Chapter 6

Rogers is not good at bringing things up, even when he - or anyone else - really wants a discussion. They don’t want one. So he sits in silence, casting occasional glances at the pair of them, probably wondering whether to give them the sad-puppy eyes until they explain to him what they’re thinking.

It’s visible, the exact moment when the possibility occurs to him that this might be the world’s most casual kidnapping. Perhaps a training exercise. His hands fold in his lap, and the sad-puppy eyes appear after a couple of seconds. If they really are trying to kidnap him, he’s not mad - he’s just  _ disappointed _ .

Mad or disappointed, it wouldn’t really matter: he’d have no problem kicking their asses and making his escape. Jack has thought about it at length, and concluded that it would take at least ten people, maybe more, to bring the guy down properly.

He thinks about it now, as they park. Rogers seems to know vaguely where they are, not that it gives him any answers. Brock turns around to fix him with a look.

“Cap, I just want you to know - thank you. For what you’re gonna do here. This means a lot to us.”

“Uh, what -?”

“C’mon,” Brock says, and thus cuts him off. He follows without further comment.

-

“ _ Now _ ,” he says, when they’re inside, “now I see why you wanted the uniform. And why you didn’t want me to tell anyone….”

“Shut up and pose, Miss America,” Brock says, but he’s smiling. Jack doesn’t hide a smirk, and that’s the first picture, as the lady works out how to use the camera - Brock with an arm slung around the Captain’s neck, grinning like a shark; Rogers laughing and leaning into the friendly manhandling; Jack all but rolling his eyes at the two of them.

The others are more formal - Rogers is here to be their witness, and he takes that job as seriously as any other, even when they’re ignoring him. For most of the ceremony, they’re looking at each other, in a way that could almost be interpreted as romantic.

(Those pictures are the ones they later get framed.)

“This is just for the benefits,” Brock declares, as soon as they’re back outside.

“Right,” Rogers says, looking like he’s the one that got hitched. Good deeds make him glow; he can barely control his vicarious happiness. “Sure, pal.”

“In case one of us is in hospital, right? Or there’s a property dispute, or… y’know, rights. A  _ legal situation _ .” He’s stressing it as if to a five-year-old - not that a five-year-old would be fooled.

“Uh-huh.” Rogers nods, settling awkwardly in the back (never enough leg room). “You’re tellin’ me this is all part of some insurance scam, right?”

“You saw that movie already?”

“Movie?”

“Never mind. But yeah - no - it’s legit but… this is just… an admin thing. Remember that.”

It’s meant to be a threat, but it comes out far too soft. He’s twisted around and they’re able to hold hands over the centre console of the car. Matching titanium bands catch the sunlight. They can’t seem to let go.

“Right, ok.”

“We should get back,” Jack says, reluctantly.

“We should. And if you tell anyone -,” Brock points at Rogers, who looks totally unconcerned because it still sounds nothing like a threat, “we’ll - I’ll - I dunno.” He chews his lip briefly, then mutters “I’ll think of somethin’,” and flops back down in his seat.

“I’m sure you will, tough guy.” Rogers is still grinning. “I’m sure you will.”


End file.
